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Friday, 29 December, 2006
THE EXECUTION OF SADDAM HUSSEIN
Pridger isn't dancing in the street over the news
of Saddam's execution. While the former dictator probably deserved to
be executed if anyone ever did, Pridger is more than slightly troubled by the
hand we Americans shared in that "justice" and execution – and what
Iraq has become since Saddam was deposed. Iraq is a much more dangerous and
deadly place now than when Hussein ruled.
Of course, Hussein was tried, convicted, and
sentenced by his own countrymen for sufficient crimes to justify execution. But
the government that tried, convicted, and executed him was facilitated, formed,
and survives, strictly by the leave of a conquering power that not only wanted
him dead, but has caused more death and destruction in Iraq than the former
president ever dreamed of.
One cannot help but feel mounting anguish at the
monumental death toll, of both Americans and Iraqis, since Saddam was toppled.
Certainly Saddam would never have come close to matching it. And
chances are, at least a generation will pass before the Humpty Dumpty of Iraq
will be put back together again – if ever.
What Saddam Hussein received was justice,
perhaps. But our hand in the affair falls somewhat short of what might be
considered a pristine example of going the extra mile to accomplish a good deed.
We supported Saddam when it suited our supposed
national interests, just as we have supported many other bloody dictators and
regimes in the past, and probably will continue to do in the future.
Many Iraqis, including many exiled in the United
States, are rejoicing in the streets over the execution. At the scene of the
execution in Baghdad, some even had the exclusive opportunity to dance merrily
around his warm corpse. But many Iraqis (perhaps a majority), realize that the
execution of Saddam Hussein is not an occasion to rejoice.
Saddam may have been a
ruthless dictator, but he was their dictator. Now they do not have a dictator,
and their nation is in ruins and divided as never before in bloody sectarian
strife.
Where once only Saddam's political enemies lived
in fear for their lives, now the entire Iraqi population lives in daily fear for
their lives, with nothing but hope (and little enough of it), in sight. Without the dictator the nation has
become ungovernable, and the inevitable stream of unintended consequences has
only begun.
John Q. Pridger
Tuesday, 27 December, 2006
THE PASSING OF PRESIDENT GERALD FORD
(1913-2006)
Pridger is saddened to hear the news of Ford's
passing. Though Pridger has never made a study of the man, by all appearances and
accounts he was a steady, steadfast, and good man – and a good
president. Perhaps he was a little too good to be re-elected.
Ford pardoned former president Richard M. Nixon
rather than following the vindictive (or politically correct), advice of those
around him who wanted more of Nixon's
blood to flow out of the Watergate affair.
Watergate, and Nixon's understandable
attempt to cover it up, was blown out of all proportion to what it actual was,
or was supposed to have been. Obviously, Nixon had made some enemies in high
places. As a result, it not only destroyed his presidency,
but the collateral damage was much more wide spread than most realize. One of
the lingering effects has been that, since the Nixon presidency, the
"press" no longer feels in the least constrained to protect any
president out of patriotic respect to the office of the presidency itself.
Naturally, part of the collateral damage was that
it sealed the fate of the long suffering South
Vietnamese people and handed a relatively easy final victory to North Vietnam and Vietnamese Communist
forces.
President Ford had the unfortunate distinction to
become the first and only American president to preside over a major military
and diplomatic defeat against communism – as well as the wholesale abandonment
of an allied nation, and the final evacuation of American forces, civilians, and
hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese from South Vietnam.
Pridger had a little personal stake in the
outcome of the Vietnam war. He remembers President Ford's eloquent, last
ditch, appeal to Congress for assistance for the faltering Saigon regime. This,
of course, was in April of 1975, and Pridger sat in his little house in Saigon
(where he lived with his family at the time),
listening to Ford over the Armed Forces Radio Vietnam.
The nation we had sworn to save for democracy was
on the brink of total collapse. Though our leaders had long before sworn to
"stay the course," that noble resolve had finally had ample
time to run its course.
There almost seemed to be some hope for a last
minute reprieve as President Ford spoke. But Pridger was skeptical. For some
time he had slowly been awakening to the realities of global polly-tricks. Too many
peculiar things had already come to pass, and it was becoming apparent that
there was more at work than the press ever cared to divulged. This in spite of
it's about face on the Vietnam War itself.
In spite of Ford's eloquence, Congress turned a
deaf ear to the presidential appeal, and the Republic of Vietnam soon passed into
history. The lives of over 50,000 American soldiers, millions of Vietnamese
(soldiers and civilians), and billions in dollars, had all been spent in vain.
We should never have been in Vietnam in the first
place, of course, though our intentions may have conceivably been good. But abandoning South
Vietnam after so much noble effort on the part of so many South Vietnamese – abandoning millions who had sincerely
sacrificed in their own effort to save their country (many of whom still had unwavering "faith" in
our ability to save them) – seemed unthinkable.
Pridger remembers his neighbors discussing the
likely turn of events around a little table in the front of the house of
"Uncle" Tu – just a few feet across the narrow walking
"street" from Pridger's own house. He remembers Bac Tu, who was a
simple carpenter, confidently reassuring other worried neighbors that, "The
Americans will not abandon us, because they cannot! They have far too much at stake
here."
Pridger, had once thought that too, but Congress
was at that very moment rebuffing President Ford's plea. The evacuation of
Americans and Vietnamese had already been going on for many days, but the
American Ambassador to Vietnam came on both Armed Forces and Vietnamese TV to
reassure the people that no such evacuation was taking place, and that American
forces weren't about to leave the country. With the Ambassador's televised
assurances, Pridger instinctively knew that the end was very near indeed.
It wasn't President Ford's fault that we abandoned Vietnam. Most Americans, (and certainly Congress), were fed up with what
seemed an unending, "un-winnable" war. To make sure the message got across,
Congress simply pulled the rug out from under the president's ability to honor
the nation's commitment by withdrawing all funding.
Ford's hands were tied, and South Vietnam's fate sealed.
As bloody, destructive, and "un-nice"
as the Vietnam war had been, there had been too many niceties and limitations placed
upon our efforts to bestow democracy on Vietnam. Wars with too many niceties and
limits simply cannot be won – certainly not against a determined enemy. A
foreign power, interceding on behalf of "good people" against other
"good people" designated as "the enemy" with another national agenda, however, must be like that
– just a little too nice to be anything but futile in the end. Especially when
the enemy's own powerful friends never faltered in their material and moral
support.
The only way to win a war against a determined
enemy is to go whole hog with unlimited killing, cruelty, and destruction – as
we did in World War Two. But, if we are the good guys, how can we do that in a
"limited" war of good intentions? Of course, we have won some limited
wars in the past, but never against a truly determined enemy – one that simply
wouldn't give up.
We could tell ourselves that Uncle Ho, the
North Vietnamese, and the Viet Cong, along with all communists (the Russians,
the Chinese, etc.), were the bad guys, but it did little good in the end. And,
with the passing of time, we find that the bad guys are not so bad after all,
even though it took a couple of decades to realize it.
Had we allowed the national
"self-determination" that we supposedly stood for during World
War Two, Ho Chi Minh (whose forces fought the Japanese in that war), would have
established an independent nation at the end of the war – and most likely one
that would have been friendly to the United States. But we supported the
return of the French colonial rulers of Indo-China instead.
Communism, of course, was the big bugaboo. Yet, we
had done so much for it during the great war that the Soviet Union became an
even greater empire than it had been before, and a superpower to boot – and China
fell to the communists at least partly due to our efforts to prevent it.
Most nationalist freedom movements in colonized
countries were "communist revolutionaries" only because that was the
only anti-colonial alternative. The Soviet Union was the only great power that
was not considered a colonial power, and it was to them they were obliged to
turn for assistance in their
struggles for independence. And, for their part, the Soviets were only too glad
to sponsor anti-imperialist revolutionaries.
John Q. Pridger
Friday, 22 December, 2006
MARKING THE BEASTS –
NAIS
A SHORT STUDY IN HOW "TYRANNY HAPPENS"
Pridger
got his second notice from the Illinois Department of Agriculture the other day
– urging him to register his premises in preparation for the final
Orwellization of life down on the farm – in the form of the National Animal
Identification System (NAIS).
This, of course, is Big Brother
calling – with the message that the shoe is about to fall on the few independent
farmers and ranchers who have thus far been able to enjoy a relatively simple
life in what was once the “land of the free and home of the brave.” Guess
it’s about time to pack it in and retire from stock farming.
Even the smallest and simplest
sort of livestock husbandry is going to take a quantum leap into The Brave New
World. It's going to become much more complicated, technical, and expensive. And
Big Brother and his enforcers will be right there breathing down your back every
minute of every day.
Imagine this, would you! When NAIS is fully
implemented, each and every meat animal and fowl in the nation (and maybe dogs
and cats too!), and the premises
upon which they are born and raised, will be even more
firmly registered and controlled than all the Thompson sub-machine guns residing
in private collections. This
seems a strange and radical degree of bureaucratic overkill – and it is. And it is
coming at us from an oblique and unexpected angle, draped in all sorts of
"good intentions."
It’s a little ironic that
it’s our premises and livestock that are going to be registered and
microchipped before our guns. But no doubt that will come in the fullness of
time. Of course, most of We the People, are already registered and
"marked" in
innumerable ways – only the implanted microchip ID and tracking device is lacking (but a
GPS enabled cell phone will do nicely until we've been softened up a little
more).
NAIS is supposedly all about
tracking animal-borne disease, but there’s no more dangerous disease-spreading
species than humans. Birds, swine, and cows, cannot hold a candle to the
diseases humans carry. One of the best ways to stop spreading exotic diseases,
whether carried by farm animals or humans, would be to cut down on all the
unnecessary trade and travel – especially trade in animals and meats – and
travel by air. In the interests of public health, people and livestock,
traveling between continents and across oceans, should be required to travel by
ship. The length of the passage would serve as an initial quarantine period.
As for ID and tracking devices
and databases, it seems to Pridger it would be more appropriate to start tagging and tracking aliens who enter the country, rather than every
cow, chicken, and horse born and raised here. But that would be too logical and serve a
valid "national" security purpose. And we all know that would be bad – like
nationalism, defending our
borders, and discriminating against feriners.
“They” (meaning the
international "people control" people), are starting the program with
farm animals because those of us likely to complain and protest are such a miniscule percentage
of the voting population that we really have no political voice at all. The
small family farmer is already an endangered species bordering on the edges of
extinction. Many, like Pridger, are advanced enough in age that it's likely
they'll fold their
cards rather than continue to play against a deck that's increasingly stacked
against them.
It's so much easier just to
accept the Social Security checks, and an easy "do-nothing" life,
than go to Washington to picket the capital and lobby Congress for the right to
raise and sell livestock without conforming to Orwellian dictates. We know our
representatives wouldn't listen anyway – simply because the don't represent
us. They represent the opposition.
The so-called “farm lobby,”
of course, is weighing in in favor of the NAIS mess, telling us what a good thing it will
be for the industry. But that lobby doesn't represent small, independent
farmers. It actually represents something else entirely – global
agribusiness and commodity traders, just like our so-called representatives
represent them.
On the global stage, of course, policy
initiatives are not subject to any vote of the people (least of all, small
farmers). That policy (hatched in the private meetings of international think
tanks and corporate boardrooms), is merely imposed on them – always as a “done deal” from afar
in high places – usually with the full endorsement of our so-called representatives
in our state houses and Washington.
Though it is termed a
“national” animal identification system, we Americans are actually merely
being meshed into a global system that is about as national as the United
Nations and the World Trade Organization. The system hit the United Kingdom and
Northern Ireland about six years ago. (Of course, it would hit the “subject
peoples” of the U.K. before it would hit sovereign Americans, but now it’s
our turn, and NAIS is coming down whether we like it or not).
An American cowman who
visited the U.K. to get a feel for the new tagging system heard remarks that run
like these:
“Man, that’s the
biggest wreck that ever happened to the cattle industry in Ireland and
England. There’s more farmers going out of business! They don’t want…
(us) to do 10 to 12 hours a day… (but an additional) four or five more hours
on a computer. Can’t keep up with the red tape. Vet bills…”
“If you’re in the
cow business in Northern Ireland, the premises ID system is a nightmare. If
you have non-contiguous acres, you have to have a premises ID for each plot or
farm… You’re gonna have to have permission to move cattle from one site to
another. The business of selling a bull to a neighbor without government
permission is over…” (Quoted from Charles Walters’ “Newsletter,” Acres
U.S.A., December, 2006.)
Charles Walters continues, “Even moving cattle from one farm to another will
require the written approval of a County Agent. This will be a new agency set up
by the government – cow cops, so to speak. These people can come onto your
farm without notification and inspect your cattle. Any animal not tagged –
computer chip or otherwise – and you haven’t got
good reason …$1,000.00 fine. Policeman, court, judge and jury in
one…”
“You’ve heard of
meat recalls… The farmer is going to have to carry a half-million-dollar
liability policy in order to sell the cattle, with permission, of course.”
“One Irish farmer
refused to tag his cattle. He said he wouldn’t sell them. The enforcers of the
‘Mark of the Beast’ fell into action. Sharpshooters arrived at the farm and
simply cut down 12 animals right there in the pasture… the meat protein farmer
is being downgraded to serf status.”
Regardless of all the
rhetoric about public health concerns and “tracking disease,” NAIS is all
about global trade in meat and meat animals, and the system is being implemented
at the behest of global movers and shakers both in and out of the livestock
marketing industry.
Some of the early NAIS
brochures circulated in this country were apparently copied directly from the
European Union system – containing the “APHIS” signature in fine print,
originating from Brussels, Germany. APHIS stands for “Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service.” As Charles Walters put it, “…the fine print has since
been changed to NAIS."
Never mind that the
overwhelming majority of American stock farmers have no real, or intentional,
stake in international markets. But, as the most recent NAIS brochure says,
“In today’s global economy, product from the animal you sell at the local
livestock market could end up on the dinner table in one of many countries.
Although the program will aid in marketing U.S. products, its greatest advantage
will be to make disease response here at home, faster, more effective and
efficient.”
All the health and
disease policy “rationalization” to which we are increasingly being subjected is
always pretty convincing to responsible, rational, people. But it is obviously really directed toward streamlining control over global markets – and that means the
big international trading concerns to whom the small independent family farmer
is nothing but a nuisance to be done away with as quickly and efficiently as
possible.
In a sensible world
there should be a clear and workable distinction between local markets and
international markets – and there would be if our leaders rationalized, first
and foremost, on a national basis in the interests of the American people. But they no longer do that. All of the
rationalization that is now effecting Americans (as subjects of the Global
Village), is done by international think tanks.
It may seem the epitome
of folly to even contemplate trade in potentially deadly pathogens, but it's
unavoidable in a global marketplace – and we're going to have global trade in
meats and animals come hell or high water. There's plenty of money in it for
those who count.
In fact, our
representatives in Washington no longer represent us with regard to the American
marketplace. That is, they don’t represent independent farm producers or
American workers who have been, and still could be, well served by producing
primarily, if not exclusively, for the American market.
They do, of
course (with some degree of credibility), claim to represent American “consumers.”
This, naturally, is how the electorate is bought off – satisfy his material
cravings at cheap enough prices and he will vote for just about anybody or any thing.
The fact is, though we
produce plenty of meat to satisfy local markets without worries of importing
exotic diseases, the hamburger the consumer eats at the local fast-food joint is
as likely to have come from Argentina or Australia as Illinois or Texas. We
imported our first known case of mad cow disease from Canada.
Why would we need to
import any cattle from Canada? We've got plenty of cattle right here in the
United States.
There
is no rationale for this except in terms of giving total license to the
interests of international traders to have a free hand in our lives. And if
things go wrong, they want to trace the problem in a hurry to some farmer –
whether he be in Australia or Texas – rather than a contaminated mega-feedlot
or mega-slaughter facility.
Could it actually be
cheaper to buy and ship beef to our local fast food outlets from Argentina or
Australia than from American farms? Is meat from “over there” that much
better? If so, something is wrong.
Obviously, something is wrong –
woefully wrong. And the same thing that is wrong with that proposition is the
source of the abundantly authoritative rationalization that we need a NAIS that includes registering and
tagging every animal, premises, and farmer in the country.
Pridger feels sorry for the
younger small stock farmers and ranchers who what to stay in the business –
often because of the
freedom and independence that such a lifestyle permits. They’ll have to knuckle to the new systemic global
regimentation and red tape or bow out.
As for Pridger, he's
had about all the Orwellization an old globophobe can stand. While Pridger
thought he might continue to produce a little beef for a while longer, he's
already retired anyway, and might just as well retrench to a subsistence farming
status.
That’s about the only
kind of independent farming that will be possible after NAIS is fully
implemented – the kind where one produces only enough meat for his own family.
It’ll be illegal to sell any animals, and thus illegal to try to make a profit
of any kind. A subsistence level operation may yet
allow a small degree of independence, but it certainly couldn’t be construed
as anything like freedom.
But not even subsistence
farmers, or the owners of a single pet chicken or horse, are to be spared from
the requirement of registering their premises. Why? According to the brochure:
"Your one animal
is as susceptible to disease as the herd or flock with hundreds. In the event of
disease, state and federal animal health veterinarians and inspectors must
insure that all disease is identified...
"If your animals are raised for your own use, and they
don't leave the premises (site), you won't need to idientify them.
"...only the animals that leave their premises of origin will be
identified. If you haul your calf, pig or other animals to the local slaughter
plant for custom processing for your consumption, the animal may not need to be
identified."
This is what the land
of the land of the free and home of the brave is coming to, and anybody who doesn’t like
it simply has to lump it. This is about control, not public health. Soon there will be nowhere in the civilized world to
escape it – and, of course, there will be nothing but the “civilized”
uniform regimented world, where every “law abiding” subject is destined to
wear and bear the “mark of the beast.”
Pridger has written
often enough of "tyranny creep." (Remember the story of the frog in
the cool pot of water which is slowly heated? Soon it feels warm and
comfortable, but later it becomes uncomfortably warm. But the the change is so
gradual that the frog never really notices the change until it's too late and
ends up boiled alive.)
NAIS
is tyranny creep on steroids – a literal great leap forward into something
America was not supposed to be. In this New World Order, every minute facet of
everyday life and activity is going to be carefully codified and regulated. Until now, it
was just military men and women, and workers employed by large corporations
(and, of course, the inmates of various penitentiaries and institutions), who
have tasted this kind of micro-management of their lives.
Increments of
tyranny are
piled onto the unwary public through processes very similar to the frog in a
heating pot of water. In carefully rationalized phases, for our
own health and safety, we are urged to "do the responsible thing" and
go along with programs devised for our own good.
The process is always aimed
toward scientifically "perfecting and refining systems" for the greater public
good – and through these processes (because they seem so rational), people allow themselves to become subject of creeping tyranny. Public health and
safety, and national security, are the main areas through which the
rationalization processes flow and emerge as policy.
People naturally crave
good health, stability, and personal safety. First, the public must be made to
feel insecure and threatened by many factors beyond their individual control, so
that they will cry out for protection. They must be made to feel that it is the
business of government to provide the security they feel they need. Then the
government will increasingly provide for that security, safety, and protection.
The people can even be expected to vote for the various components that will
comprise their leg irons and facilitate their own enslavement.
Ultimately, the safest,
most secure, place for people is in some sort of padded and locked cell. So it
is that people at first find the controlled environment rather comfortable and the chains
and leg irons reassuring. If the cell is provided with all sorts of cake and
circuses, Internet access, etc., it may even feel like a new unbounded
freedom.
In time, NAIS-like
registration and identification systems will almost undoubtedly be required of all people.
Actually we already have it, less the micro-chip, but that is coming eventually,
you can be fairly certain of that. All it
requires is the continued scientific application of mass psychology – and a little more careful
rationalization. After
all, in the final analysis, people are potentially much more dangerous than any
number of meat animals. Would it make
sense to allow potential terrorists and illegal combatants (meaning all of us),
to run free without microchips while all dumb animals are required to be tagged and tracked?
We can be pretty sure
that none of this is happening by accident or coincidence. Who is it that is
clever enough to plan all of this and make all happen? Pridger doesn't have a
list of names, but obviously it would be those who know what is best for us, of
course!
It has been said that
people tend to go crazy in large numbers like stampeding herds, but eventually awaken to sanity one at a time
– always too late to undo what has already passed.
John Q. Pridger
Friday, 15 December, 2006
HORSE SLAUGHTER BANNED (What next?)
Few Americans think of horses and mules at
meat animals. In fact, to most Americans, the mere thought of eating horse meat
is almost as repugnant as the thought of eating the pet dog or cat.
Unfortunately, something has to be done with all
the aged, retired, horses that linger long beyond their age of usefulness. Simply taking them to the
vet to be put to sleep is hardly a viable option – and when you have a dead horse on
your hands, you've got a pretty large problem.
Fortunately, horses and other draft animals are meat animals (whether
they tempt the squeamish American palate or not), and (since long before the
dawn of civilization), this has provided a perfectly practical way and means of
dealing with old, no longer useful, animals. Horse meat is an excellent food –
if not for Americans, at least for the less squeamish or the truly hungry, and
for cats, dogs, pet lions, and tigers, etc.
A few spoilers, in the guise of animal rights
activists, seem to have managed to influence the law of the land, making it
illegal to slaughter horses and other draft animals. This is a major disaster
for those who deal with such animals on anything larger than a one or two
animal, or pet, basis. The Amish, who still use horses for their main means of
transportation as well as farm work, are particularly impacted, and so are all breeders and horse
farmers who deal with large numbers of such animals.
The animal rights crowd feel that no animal
should be killed or eaten, and if humans keep animals for pleasure or work, they
should keep them alive and healthy until they die a natural death – after
witch they must be cremated or given a proper burial. They haven't quite become
powerful enough to ban the slaughter of chickens, cattle, and hogs, of course,
but they do have considerable sympathy from animal lovers in general when it
comes to "pet" and "work" animals.
Naturally, with the ban on horse slaughter
passed, the burden of providing old-age homes and hospice facilities for
millions of animals falls on animal owners rather than the animal rights people.
The animal rights people can simply bask in triumphant self-righteousness.
The average horse lover may not be too negatively
impacted by this fairyland legislation. Most would simply sell their horse to an
unwitting horse lover before it became too old to be of use. A few may even have
the space to provide their old animals with green pastures until they breath
their last aged breath. Almost none want to have to deal with a dead horse, but
one dead horse every two or three decades isn't too much of a burden.
What are we supposed to do with the millions of
animals that would have been turned into nutritious food at the end of their
lives? It's a bigger problem than most of our urbanized population realize. It's
not only a death sentence to a major industry and many stock farmers, but to the
animals that it is supposed to protect.
The only logical remedy would seem to be to
drastically curtail all activities that require the use of horses, mules, and
burros – cutting their numbers down to prevent the high costs of old age
maintenance. In other words, putting them on the endangered species list – or
at least into the rare breeds category.
Though few Americans have even been aware of it,
horse slaughter has always been a big business, and a very valuable one, but now
it will join a lot of other American industries that simply have to cease
and desist in this New World Order.
One wonders how animal rights activists have
managed to prevail upon our legislature in this day and age of terrorist
threats. Apparently the FBI has monitored some of the most prominent animal rights groups
(such as the Animal
Liberation Front (ALF), and People for
Ethical Treatment of Animals – PETA), as posing a potential domestic terrorists threats.
In light of the war on terror, how could our legislators justify caving in to
such organizations? Have they been threatened?
Terrorists? Apparently, PETA would do away with
all domestic farm animals and pets in order to prevent them from being treated
cruelly, incarcerated, used for food or clothing, or scientific research. Sounds
like a conspiracy to commit animal genocide, since billions of animals would no
longer have a purpose for existing if the animal rights groups had their way.
Make your own judgments. Visit PETA at: http://www.peta.org/
– and the ALF at http://www.animalliberationfront.com/
– then surf over to a web site of the opposition, at "PETA Kills Animals,
dot com": http://www.petakillsanimals.com/.
John Q. Pridger
SPEAKING OF ORWELLIZATION...
The National Animal Identification System (NAIS),
is moving ahead. It will put a lot of small farmers out of business as planned,
leaving the livestock industry increasingly in the hands of the corporate
big boys.
The message to small stock farmers is knuckle to
Big Brother or go out of business. The big boys, of course, welcome the
continuing transition of the business climate to one where only a relative few
big boys will survive and dominate.
The system is really another international
control system – aimed at "producer control" rather than solving
potential health problems associated with tainted meats, as it is billed.
Nothing like this abomination could ever come to
pass if the nation were not already such a perverted economic entity – so
totally out of balance that it takes one's breath away to reflect on it.
In a balanced economy, at least 25% of the
population would still be down on the farm as small, independent, family
farmers. But that isn't the case. The family farmer has become an endangered
specie with absolutely no political voice. What passes as the "farm
lobby" represents the big agribusiness, not farmers. The farmers who
benefit from representation of the farm lobby are those relative few survivors
who have made the transition to corporate scale farming, using approved
corporate scale methods of production.
If 25% of the population was still down on the
farm, as it should be, small independent farmers would still have a very
significant political voice. Things such as NAIS would be stopped in their
tracks at the "proposal" stage. As it is, such things as NAIS are
proposed and become policy without much public exposure or protest. As it is,
the few protesting are mere whispers in the wilderness of corporate and One
World movers and shakers that set policy to conform to their own world view.
Pridger is one of the small fry slated for
extinction. The choice is "Either knuckle to the NAIS mandate, or get out
of the beef cattle business." Both choices are forms of knuckling to the
dictates of the big boys. So there is no real choice at all – except whether
one remains legal, by complying by withdrawing. The only other alternative being
to become an outlaw.
Becoming an outlaw isn't a very promising option.
What good is a healthy herd of beef if you cannot legally sell your production
at the local auction barn? Of course, an underground black market in livestock
will probably evolve, but the NAIS police (empowered and funded by the Office of
Homeland Security), will be out there, doing their best to bring recalcitrant
farmers and ranchers to justice. The options are simply not all that good for
anybody who is fond of considering himself both a law abiding citizen and a
sovereign individual.
When the shoe falls, Pridger will probably go
foreign. There are more congenial places than the "land of the free and the
home of the brave" – where there is no longer any freedom and precious
little bravery (except, perhaps, in some war theater on foreign soil, bringing
the Wonderful New World to other recalcitrant groups elsewhere).
At least in a foreign country there is the
comfort of knowing that you are a foreigner in a foreign land. That is better
than finding yourself a foreigner in the land of your birth – a land that was
conceived with freedom, liberty, and justice in mind, but now has become an
Orwellian tyranny.
John Q. Pridger
Tuesday, 5 December, 2006
THINKING AND ACTING LOCALLY
Under globalism and the New World Order, we (or
at least everybody who "matters"), are supposed to think and act
globally. Actually, the masses aren't supposed to think at all – but are merely
expected to adjust to "evolving realities" under which they (meaning
99.9999% of all of us) have absolutely no control.
At the very root and core of the One World
movement (behind all the rhetoric about the "highest aspirations of
mankind") is an unified global system of "people
control" that functions through control of finance. In other words, first and foremost, we
are now under the control of the international money power, and the system of
globe-straddling corporations that has grown up around it. Money (and credit) is both the
carrot and the stick used to literally manipulate humanity and bring all people
under a single global "economy."
How about thinking and acting
locally, with all due respect for the rest of humanity? After all, locally is
where most of us live, and the globe is still a rather big place in spite of ADM,
WalMart, jet planes, and instantaneous global communications and financial
markets.
Well, we can still do that individually, and in
some cases on a communal basis, of course. But, since our government (despite,
continued alleged "national independence," the Constitution, and the
wisdom of our founders), has signed us up for globalism. The United States
Department of Defense is now devoted to the defense of the global economy –
the interests of international capital – rather
than defending the American people and the homeland (the Office of Homeland
Security notwithstanding).
The president is saying much more than what readily
meets the ear when he says our forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are
"defending the American way of life." The American way of life, now
depends on foreign sources and foreign suppliers for just about everything
required to sustain the "standard of living to which we have become accustomed."
Of course, Iraq isn't all that important to the American way of life, but going
to war with it is still within the realm of "protecting the American way of
life." It does have a lot of oil – and we do need oil – so that is one
rationale for the war. Another is that war helps obscure other more fundamental
problems, and it provides an excuse to engage in deficit spending far beyond
what would ever be dreamed of during times of peace. The war is literally on the
tab – completely (so Pridger understands), "off budget." How in the world can our leaders get
away with such a flagrant degree of Voodoo Doodoo???!!! (Ah! But Voodoo
Economics is such an amazing science!)
(But, of course, another reason we had to subdue
Iraq was because it posed a potential military threat to Israel. Ironically, the
government of the United States seems to be much more committed to the security of Israel
than to the real security of the United States and the welfare of
the American people).
"Democracy" is both a misnomer and facade.
Democracy cannot exist under the New World Order. It is totally inconsistent
with One Worldism. There was nothing democratic about the advent of globalism
and the way it came about.
It was conceived, initiated, and accomplished in spite of our alleged democratic
institutions and constitutional republic rather than because of them.
We don't have democracy in the United States, and
we've already frittered away our independent constitutional republic. One man,
one vote, only means we can vote on things that have absolutely no bearing on
how we are governed and by whom at the federal level. We may elect our representatives, but they go
off to Washington only to find (if they didn't already know), that they don't
really represent their constituencies at all, but international capital and Wall
Street.
Oh, they may represent the people back home in
petty ways. That's what pork barrel is all about – procuring enough goodies to give the
home folks the impression of active representation, and provide enough
goodies to hopefully justify re-election. Being a representative is a good job,
with high pay and extraordinarily good fringe benefits.
Ironically, during most of the twentieth century
Americans were told of the dangers of Communism and fascism, and that we had to
defend our nation against them. Fascism, of course, was defeated during WWII,
leaving the communist threat. But as soon as the threat of international
communism was laid to rest, something much more all encompassing was presented
to the world and the American people as a "done deal." Yet the New World
Order, benignly referred to as globalism, is a form of international
capitalistic collectivism that is sort of an inverted form of fascism.
The economic aspect of Germany's National
Socialism embodied a fascist economic model that worked very well for Germany, much to the embarrassment of the rest of the industrialized
world. While we and western Europe suffered in the throes of economic depression,
the German economy rebuilt
itself and thrived during the decade leading up to the Second World War. But
under the National Socialist System, the private economy and military-industrial combine
were under
the control of the central government, and the national economy was planned by
government and business leaders for the benefit of Germany and the German
people.
If Hitler had not had an eye toward a
"greater Germany" and had not had the avowed intention of destroying Bolshevism
and the communist threat from the Soviet Union, the National Socialist economic
model might have provided a good model for other nations to follow. It was a
system whereby the government and industry could successfully work together to bring
prosperity to the people – and it succeeded in spite of being shunned by most
of the other industrialized nations.
As professor Carrol Quigley put it in Tragedy
& Hope, "The Nazi system was dictatorial capitalism." Capital
was enthroned under the dictatorial control of Hitler and the Nazi party. But
the system was aimed at making Germany a better place and the German population
more prosperous.
Globalism is a form of reversed fascism because
capital interests, rather than individual national governments, are being given
carta blanc to plan the world economy in which we all live, and the future that
we will have.
Let's back up a little and look at the definition
of Fascism. It's defined by Pridger's little American Heritage Dictionary as
"A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right,
typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with a belligerent
nationalism."
Fascism, of course, is a loaded term, since we
fought a costly world war to defeat a fascist axis of evil – thus "a
dictatorship of the extreme right... together with a belligerent
nationalism" are a little difficult to mentally separate from the possibly
workable "merging of state and business leadership," economic connotation of the word.
Clearly "merging state and business
leadership" in planning a national economic policy does not require a right
wing dictatorship or "belligerent nationalism." Business and
government, along with the people, should work together for the greater
public good! And there is no reason why this could not be done while the
government continues to protect and defend the constitutional guarantees of
freedom, liberty, and justice for all.
In any case, it is the
merging of state and business leadership that forms the context within which I
call globalism a form of inverted international fascism. To make this perspective a little clearer,
Pridger will give a definition of "globalism" as he sees it.
GLOBALISM: "a broad, nondescript, term for a
global economic system embedding a system of world governance composed of unseen
planners and manipulators and technicians, unaccountable to any government or peoples, which
exercise a benign dictatorship through control of a global financial structure
that empowers international business capital to manage global production,
markets, and trade, for their private gain."
This is inversed fascism in the sense that no
national government, representing its citizens, is significantly involved with
either national or international economic planning. The alleged goal is to make
self-regulating "market forces" rule. The partnership between the
global "business leadership" and various national governments is one
in which the business leadership is in overall charge, and the several national
governments are in a subservient role – basically providing protection and
security for business in the form of national and international "police and
military powers."
But the so-called self-regulating market forces
that supposedly "rule" the global marketplace, are in fact under the
manipulative control of powerful individuals and corporate entities – none of
which were ever elected to a governing position in any nation.
Today, and at least since World War II, the idea
of "autarky" (self-sufficiency, especially in spiritual or economic
matters [Oxford English Dictionary]), is considered a barbaric national goal.
Yet the desirability of self-sufficiency in at least economic matters would seen
more than self-evident whether applied to individuals or nations, and certainly
desirable in a nation as well endowed with natural resources as the United
States.
Of course, not even the United States can be
totally self-sufficient in all things. But any nation capable of doing so ought
to at least be self-sufficient in food and other basic necessities of life, as
well as most basic consumer needs. This would seem like simple common sense.
Yet, by willful public economic and trade policy,
the United States of America has been laid so completely dependent and
vulnerable that any serious thought that the Department of Homeland Defense
could provide anything like real national security is totally ludicrous.
John Q. Pridger
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